7 Disgusting Things Pioneers Ate to Survive
These are seven genuinely revolting foods that American pioneers consumed to stay alive during their journey westward. And I'm not talking about things that just sound unappetizing to our modern palates—I'm talking about foods that even the pioneers themselves found disgusting, but ate anyway because the alternative was death.
Between the 1840s and 1890s, over 400,000 people traveled the western trails from Independence, Missouri, attempting to cross approximately 2,000 miles of untamed wilderness to reach destinations like Oregon Territory and California. The journey typically took four to six months, and about one in ten pioneers died along the way from various causes. Among the greatest threats was starvation—because the harsh reality of frontier life was nothing like the romanticized version we often see in movies and television.
Today, we're going to explore the desperate measures these travelers took when their food supplies ran out, spoiled, or were lost to river crossings, theft, or animal deaths. What you're about to hear comes directly from pioneer diaries, survivor accounts, and historical records. This is the real story of what people ate when survival was the only thing that mattered.
Number Seven: Hardtack—The Worm Castles
Let's start with something that was technically intended to be food, even though calling it that is generous. Hardtack was a simple, unleavened biscuit made from flour, water, and sometimes salt. It measured about three inches by three inches and half an inch thick, and it was baked multiple times to remove absolutely all moisture. The goal was to create something that could last for years without spoiling.
And it did last. Perhaps too well.
The pioneers had several nicknames for hardtack: "molar breakers," "tooth dullers," and my personal favorite, "worm castles." That last name should tell you everything you need to know. During long journeys, these rock-hard biscuits became infested with weevils and maggots. The pioneers developed a specific technique—they would tap the hardtack against a hard surface to shake out the insects before eating. Some chose to eat in complete darkness so they wouldn't have to see what they were consuming.
When you could finally manage to get hardtack into your mouth, it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. The biscuits were so hard they could break teeth, so pioneers would soak them in coffee or water for extended periods, or fry them in bacon grease if they were lucky enough to have any. This wasn't a sometimes food or an emergency ration—this was a staple that pioneers and Civil War soldiers relied on regularly between 1861 and 1865 and throughout the wagon train era.
The fact that hardtack is number seven on this list should give you an idea of how much worse things are going to get.
Number Six: Every Organ You Can Think Of
Modern food culture has come full circle on this one—organ meats are now considered delicacies in high-end restaurants. But for pioneers, consuming tripe, liver, kidneys, hearts, tongues, and brains wasn't a culinary choice. It was absolute necessity.
When you slaughtered an animal on the trail, you used every single part because you had no idea when you'd have access to meat again. This practice, which we now call "nose-to-tail" eating or entomophagy when it includes insects, wasn't about being adventurous or sustainable—it was about not dying.
Tripe, the stomach lining of cattle, was particularly common when fresh meat was unavailable. It was one of the last parts to spoil and could be dried or preserved for later use. Liver was especially valued because, although pioneers didn't understand the science behind it, it helped prevent scurvy due to its vitamin content.
The pioneers didn't enjoy this. These weren't treats. But when you're facing a four to six month journey across terrain that could kill you in a dozen different ways, you didn't have the luxury of being squeamish about what part of the animal you were eating. Every calorie counted, and wasting any portion of a slaughtered animal could mean the difference between making it to Oregon or becoming another grave marker along the trail.
Number Five: Prairie Butter—And No, It Wasn't Butter
The pioneers had a talent for giving pleasant-sounding names to thoroughly unpleasant foods, and "prairie butter" might be the best example of this phenomenon.
Prairie butter was bone marrow—the soft, fatty tissue inside the bones of buffalo, cattle, or other large animals. After consuming all the meat they could from a carcass, pioneers would crack open the bones to access this last source of fat and calories.
They called it prairie butter because of its fatty, spreadable consistency. And here's the thing—it was actually crucial for survival. In an environment where obtaining enough calories and fat was a daily challenge, bone marrow provided concentrated nutrition that could keep people alive.
Pioneers would eat it raw or cooked, and sometimes they'd mix it with dried berries to create something called pemmican, which we'll talk about in a moment. Many pioneers learned this practice from Native Americans, who had been utilizing every part of the buffalo for generations. Buffalo bones were particularly prized when they could be found.
From a modern perspective, bone marrow has actually made a comeback in upscale dining. But let's be clear—eating marrow from a bone you've just cracked open on the prairie, possibly with your bare hands, after weeks of minimal food, is a fundamentally different experience than ordering it at a trendy restaurant.
Number Four: Pemmican—The Original Energy Bar, Sort Of
Speaking of pemmican, this is where we get into foods that were actually well-designed for survival, even if the ingredients and preparation would make most modern people lose their appetite.
Pemmican was a concentrated mixture of dried meat and fat, sometimes with berries added. It was a traditional Native American food that pioneers adopted, and for good reason—it could last for years without refrigeration. The typical composition was fifty percent dried meat that had been pounded into a powder, and fifty percent rendered fat. When properly made and stored, this stuff was nearly indestructible.
The Lewis and Clark expedition relied heavily on pemmican between 1804 and 1806, and it became a standard ration for fur traders and explorers. Eventually, it even became a commercial product in the later frontier period.
But here's where things get disgusting. While traditional pemmican was made from buffalo or deer, desperate pioneers made variations using whatever meat they could find. This included horse, mule, and in some cases, dog. When you're starving and you have the carcass of a dead pack animal, you're not thinking about what sounds appetizing—you're thinking about concentrated calories that won't spoil.
The genius of pemmican was in its efficiency. It was lightweight, packed with energy, and practically indestructible. The disgusting part was what sometimes went into it when conventional meat sources weren't available.
Number Three: Insects and Grubs—The Protein You Didn't Want
Now we're getting into territory that would make most people today genuinely nauseated. During the Rocky Mountain Locust plagues between 1874 and 1877, massive swarms of locusts devastated crops across the Great Plains. These swarms covered an estimated 198,000 square miles and contained approximately 12.5 trillion locusts. Pioneers watched their entire food supply get consumed by insects right before their eyes.
And then, they ate the insects.
Grasshoppers, crickets, and locusts were roasted, ground into flour, or added to stews. Some Native American tribes had established locust-eating traditions and shared these techniques with desperate settlers. Even Charles Valentine Riley, Missouri's State Entomologist, proposed official recipes for eating locusts during the plague years. From a nutritional standpoint, this actually made sense—insects are high in protein and often more nutritious than whatever alternatives were available.
Laura Ingalls Wilder documented this firsthand in "On the Banks of Plum Creek," describing how her family survived the locust devastation on the prairie. When locusts weren't providing unwanted protein, pioneers in truly desperate situations would consume grubs found in rotting wood. Again, these were actually nutritious, but the psychological barrier of eating larvae from decomposing trees is not something most of us can easily imagine overcoming.
The historical record on insect consumption is somewhat less detailed than other survival foods on this list, but enough accounts exist to confirm this wasn't just an occasional occurrence. When the choice was between eating insects or starving, people ate insects.
It's worth noting that entomophagy—the practice of eating insects—is common in many cultures around the world and is even being promoted today as a sustainable protein source. But there's a significant difference between culturally accepted insect cuisine and desperately roasting locusts because they've just destroyed your only food supply.
Number Two: Boiled Leather, Crushed Bones, and Candles
This is where we transition from "disgusting but technically food" to "things that aren't food at all, but people ate them anyway because the alternative was death."
When pioneers ran completely out of actual food, they turned to items that contained any nutritional value whatsoever, no matter how minimal. Animal hides—the leather used for various purposes on the trail—would be boiled for days to create a gelatinous substance. This wasn't nourishing in any meaningful way, but it was something to put in your stomach.
Bones that had already been used for making broth would be crushed and boiled repeatedly, extracting every possible trace of nutrients. When even that wasn't available, people chewed bark and twigs for the fiber, knowing it provided essentially no nutrition but gave their bodies something to process.
And then there were candles. Specifically, tallow candles made from animal fat. In extreme starvation situations, these candles became food items. Think about that for a moment—eating your light source because you're so desperately hungry that waxy animal fat seems like a reasonable meal.
These weren't isolated incidents of one or two people making bizarre choices. These were documented survival strategies that multiple groups of pioneers employed when facing starvation. The human will to survive is extraordinarily powerful, and it will override just about every instinct that tells you something isn't food.
Which brings us to our final item, and the darkest chapter in pioneer history.
Number One: The Donner Party—When Survival Meant the Unthinkable
In April 1846, a group of 87 people called the Donner Party departed Springfield, Illinois, heading for California. Led by George Donner and Jacob Donner, they were ordinary people seeking a better life in the west. By the time their ordeal ended, fewer than half of them would survive, and their story would become the most infamous example of survival cannibalism in American history.
The timeline of their disaster reads like a horror story, except it's completely real. In July 1846, they made a catastrophic decision to take the Hastings Cutoff, a supposed shortcut promoted by Lansford Hastings in his misleading guidebook "The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California." This detour actually added weeks to their journey. By October, they were trapped by early snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains. In December, people began dying of starvation. And by late December into January 1847, the survivors faced an impossible choice.
Before they resorted to cannibalism, the Donner Party ate everything else on this list and more. They consumed all their regular provisions. They ate the mice and rodents they could catch. They boiled animal hides for days, trying to extract anything resembling nutrition. They crushed bones and boiled them repeatedly. They chewed bark. They ate their candles. They tried everything possible to avoid what they knew was coming.
But starvation is relentless, and eventually, people began dying. The survivors were faced with an unthinkable reality: all around them were sources of protein that could keep them alive.
Survivor accounts and rescuer testimonies confirm what happened. When rescue parties finally reached them between February and April 1847, the evidence was undeniable. Of the original 87 members, 39 to 41 had died.
One of the survivors, Virginia Reed Murphy, wrote to her cousin in May 1847. Her letter contained one piece of advice that has echoed through history: "Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as you can."
The last survivor rescued was Lewis Keseberg, who became a controversial figure due to the circumstances in which he was found. The survivors carried the trauma of what they'd experienced for the rest of their lives, along with social stigma that followed them. Even in a survival situation, even when faced with death, cannibalism remained deeply taboo in society.
The Donner Party's story is extensively documented through multiple survivor accounts, rescuer testimonies, and archaeological evidence. There's academic consensus on the events, though some specific details remain debated. Today, there's a Donner Memorial State Park established at the site of the tragedy, ensuring that this dark chapter of pioneer history is never forgotten.
The seven items we've covered today—from insect-infested hardtack to the ultimate taboo of the Donner Party—paint a picture of frontier life that's radically different from the romanticized versions we often see in popular culture. The myth of pioneer life emphasizes adventure and plenty, with brave settlers conquering the wilderness under the banner of Manifest Destiny. The reality involved significant suffering, malnutrition, and death.
These pioneers weren't heroes because they ate disgusting things. They were ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances, doing whatever it took to survive. They underestimated journey lengths, watched their supplies spoil or get lost in river crossings, and faced conditions that would break most of us today.
What's fascinating is how some of these foods have come full circle. Organ meats are now delicacies. Pemmican has been recreated by survivalists and outdoor enthusiasts. Bone marrow appears on upscale restaurant menus. Even hardtack is occasionally made for historical reenactments. The difference, of course, is choice. We choose these foods out of curiosity or culinary interest. The pioneers chose them because the alternative was dying on the trail.
The Oregon Trail and other western routes are now preserved as National Historic Trails, designated in 1978. Multiple museums are dedicated to telling these stories with historical accuracy rather than romantic embellishment. Because the truth about pioneer life, as uncomfortable as it may be, deserves to be remembered and understood.
These people ate worm-infested biscuits, organ meats, bone marrow, desperate variations of pemmican, insects, boiled leather, and in the most extreme case, each other. They did it to survive. They did it to reach the promise of a better life on the other side of those 2,000 miles of wilderness. And many of them didn't make it.
So the next time you see a movie or show depicting pioneer life as some grand adventure, remember what survival actually meant. Remember the worm castles, the prairie butter, and the dark winter in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Remember that approximately one in ten people who started that journey never finished it.
The pioneers' legacy isn't just about westward expansion or manifest destiny. It's about the extraordinary lengths human beings will go to in order to survive, and the price they paid for the life we enjoy today.
